Sunday, September 1, 2019

Saturday evening, I
officiated Alix and Amit’s Jewish wedding ceremony at the Fort Worth Club, in Fort Worth, Texas.
Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

Here’s the fascinating thing
about Alix and Amit’s love story: Circumstances that would have felled lesser
couples, not only did not stand in their way; they brought them closer.

Take the most obvious fact:
You would think that as a Jew and a Hindu, they would have less in common than,
say, a Jew and a Christian. And, yet, they both found much in common due to
this very fact. In America,
the most religious country in the Western World, if you are a non-Christian
(and sometimes even if you are a Christian), you may find folks actively trying
to convert you. This happened many times to Alix and Amit. This is not a
criticism, incidentally. If you truly believe that the road to heaven lies in
adopting your belief system, exclusively, how could you not attempt this?

When they met, they were
both at the tail end of long-term relationships. That is usually a less than
ideal time to build a new relationship. However, it was in talking about their
experiences and reflecting on those relationships, that they grew close and
eventually became a couple.

When they made that move
from friends to romantic partners, it was as members of a small cohort of
students, where this was not without its drawbacks. They did not allow this to
hold them back, because as Alix says, “Secrets can be fun!” Amit explains, “We
started a relationship but told no one but a couple of our closest friends:
sharing a secret and speaking in code at times was a blast, and almost
certainly brought us even closer together.”

Now, at that time, Amit was
in his fifth year of graduate school, while Alix had just begun. So, as Amit
says, “We always thought it had an expiration date, since I was moving to Dartmouth to start my
first faculty job.” Well, that supposed expiration date came and went, and
their relationship continued. The travel became almost matter of fact, “I would
take the 9-hour train ride to see him; he would do the 6-hour drive to come see
me,” says Alix.

Then, Alix and Amit took
Calum Scott’s line in his popular song, You are the Reason, as a challenge,
rather than a lament: “I’d climb every mountain, and swim every ocean, just to
be with you,” so Amit moved to the Netherlands… Once again, this might
create insurmountable problems for other couples. How did this couple respond?
Alix says, “We joked... (that this) long-distance was ‘better,’ because it was
only a 6-hour flight, (which is) better than the 9-hour train.”

In surmounting these
obstacles, Alix and Amit show us that what matters is not the circumstance you
are in, your fate, if you will. What matters is how you choose to relate to
that circumstance, and through that you can escape the clutches of fate and
forge your destiny. That's why what Amit says really rings true: “Not sure what
the future holds, but if we're working together, we can handle anything life
throws at us.”